Quote:
Originally Posted by Uncle Robin
Returning to "an oldie but a goodie" - anachronisitc writing. I just DNF'd a book at The Storygraph after having had enough of the two leads using late C20/early C21 Standard English. The real kicker came courtesy of a review at Goodreads, which commented on the female lead's assertion on her appearance in the story that she had an honours degree from Girton. Quite a neat trick since the story is set more than 50 years before Girton awarded any. That's just lazy!  |
Yeah. The language doesn't really bother me (except when it uses words that should be clearly unknown in the time period/fantasy world -
adrenaline crops up pretty often, for example). What bothers me the most in historical fiction is characters thinking and behaving like modern people and spouting modern values at every step. That's just plain wrong. If I wanted to read about modern people, I would read a novel set in modern times.
And sometimes there are really egregious factual errors like medieval European peasants eating potatoes and tomatoes. Not often these days, but they still happen sometimes. Smaller mistakes I can forgive if the story is good, but not this level of ignorance.